This Is How Many Insects You Can Consume A Year When You Drink Coffee

Bugs are everywhere. There’s no refuting that fact. That’s why the FDA has to make allowances for a certain amount of insects or insect fragments in our food. They’re labeled as unavoidable defects in food and found in lots of ingredients, such as peanut butter, chocolate and even fruits and vegetables. This includes coffee, folks. COFFEE.

The FDA keeps a cap on the amount of insects allowed in our food, but over time this number adds up. (Math can be a scary thing sometimes.) If you look at the quantity of food you’ve eaten over time and the amount of insect bits allowed in that food, what you end up with is a whole lot of bugs.

Terro, the insect control company, put together a chart with that information. They looked at how many bugs and insect fragments the FDA allows to be found packaged in foods, and calculated what that would amount to over the course of a year per person. The most startling outcome is how many insect fragments are in your morning cup of coffee. You might want to sit down for this ... after a year of drinking coffee, you can ingest up to 136,080 insect fragments.

Do the insects affect the quality of your coffee? No. You can’t even taste them.In fact, many people are moving toward eating bugs because they’re a sustainable protein source and leave very little impact on the environment when farmed.But, we just thought you should know.

Check out the infographic from Terro for more information on how many of these fragments the average American eats per year.